


Nibelungen

by Lucarn



Category: Shadow Hearts
Genre: Character Study, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Potentially OOC, Pre-Canon, Short Chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-10-29 13:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20797157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucarn/pseuds/Lucarn
Summary: She is neither Kriemhild nor is she Brunhild. But she isn't Siegfried either.She is Karin and her role model is Grandmother.Or - one pasttime granddaughter and grandmother used to share was to reimagine the Nibelungen performances they watched.





	1. Chapter 1

Grandmother Brigitte, Karin realizes early in her life, is smarter than most people around her. She also doesn't like people trying to dictate what she is supposed to do or not.

"I might be getting old but I'm well enough to walk those few meters from the carriage into the opera house," she scolds her son. "And Karin has a good set of legs under her, just like me."

Karin doesn't hear the undertones in that conversation until a few years later. Now she is nine years old and vibrating with excitement because she will see another performance with Grandmother who is the best, who always explains details if they go over Karin's head, who she knows could vanquish a dragon with a sword.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going your way lies in the family. Grandmother is a supportive teacher.

Karin has a cousin that supposedly vanished during the night three years ago. 

She has vague memories of meeting him once during a birthday party for her father. His face faded from her memories like smoke, as did any other part of his appearance - except for his hands. He had long fingers, little patches of green and red on the tips, that securely grasped her stubby ones as she swayed their joined hands. The music was boring but he laughed and smiled in their circuit around and across the faded carpet. The important thing was that he laughed _with_ her. She already knew back then the difference between that and when somebody made fun of her just because she was younger.

Like Grandmother teaches her now did she teach him back then. Nobody speaks about him in the family except in hushed voices or with frowns. Grandmother does but she isn't just anybody.

"Frank is a gentle soul," she says while her pen glides over Karin's notes. She has summarized the plot of Siegfried's story, using it as the basis to reimagine Brunhild in his place as her latest homework. Grandmother is adding her own thoughts that ask questions that Karin knows will make her head steam from thinking hard. 

"He's always loved to paint, loved to talk about art. I would often find him walking through the English Garden during sunny days to paint the sights even when it was cold. It was his favorite place."

Right now, the soft rasp of metal on paper with the crackle of the fire makes her sleepy. She sits slumped in the red armchair, head bedded on her arms against the cushion.

"Is that why his fingers looked so funny? There were so many colors on them."

Grandmother throws her head back to laugh.

"That happens when you work with oil paints. They are messy and hard to remove from both skin and cloth alike. It drove his parents mad although Frank always wore a cheap, extra set of shirt, trousers, and shoes. Eventually he just came over to our house to change since I was teaching him anyway."

She shakes her head. This shakes the bun on top of her head she has fastened with a pin that looks like a rapier. It glints in the light of the fire.

Grandmother has a lot of rapiers, even when they're not swords.

Did- or does Frank do the same? Only with paintings?

"Does he still paint? And where did he go? Everybody always looks so angry when he's mentioned." Karin tilts her head so that her chin digs into her arms now. A strand of her hair falls into her face and she blows it away. "I don't believe he did anything bad. He's nice."

"Sometimes nice people can perform atrocious acts. And some innocent people can be very uncomfortable to deal with. But you are right, Frank did nothing bad." Grandmother looks over the rim of her glasses before she pushes them back up. "A large part of our family will claim what he did was wrong. I cannot judge that but if any harm was done, it was against Frank. 

"His parents tried to pressure him to go into the military like it's tradition for all children of the von König family."

"Which is why I'm learning how to wield the rapier." And she is going to excel at it!

"Indeed. You take to training like a duck to water." She preens under the praise, confiming her thoughts. 

"As a hale young man, relatively strong, he would have made a fine fighter, too- if not for his gentle heart. Well, his heart in general. He always did well during drills, riding, all of the basics but he buckled under the strictness of it and his parents' expectations. The poor lad almost became an anxious mess because his tutor kept screaming at him. And fighting, battle, it is simply not in his blood. As I said, his love is for the arts."

"So he ran away?" 

It would make sense. The adults around Karin, except Grandmother, refuse to explain the situation but she notices how they act, how they talk when they think she doesn't. She always does - she is a veteran opera and theater visitor. There is so much to observe in the smallest gesture, when a voice changes in pitch, in the twitch of the lips. So she's made her own conclusions.

They are also in Grandmother's personal office. Nobody is allowed to enter without knocking, and she knows certain spells that allow her to stop any sound from leaving. (Unfortunately Karin won't learn them because her aptitude lies in elemental, offensive magic.) You can't hear anything from the inside even if you press indents into the door with your ears. 

Karin knows because she tried two, three, four times. Once the butler caught her. He never said anything because she spotted him doing the same the next day.

That look again, with Grandmother peering over her glasses. "He made a tactical retreat out of a situation that he couldn't win."

She grins. "'Running to save your life is not a shame. It means you can still continue.' That's what you told me."

"Cheeky." This is one of the best moments ever. She can't know because she can't be everywhere at the same time, but Karin likes to think she's the only one who makes Grandmother Brigitte smirk.

"You are correct. He informed me of his plans because he knew I am supportive of his aspirations. I arranged a meeting with an old acquaintance of mine, a general who would hear Frank out on a career under him. Estactic on his change of mind, his parents sent him off one month later with some money, his best clothes, and a letter of recommendation." 

A shrug. "Unfortunately, he never reached the general. He must have gotten lost on the way. Mind you, the man is a bit... forgetful so he never alerted our family of Frank's absence until I wrote to him again. We had to learn where your cousin was from one of your mother's business partners more than a year later. She told her over tea she had commissioned Frank to paint her a portrait in Paris."

Karin slaps her palm over her mouth, snorting. Grandmother tuts with her finger.

"Please don't make that noise, Karin, it's impolite. It was a big shock, after all. So much that almost everybody forgot how he actually left from the Munich Railway station in the morning, waving goodbye from the train, and that he had not vanished during the night."

That only makes it harder to swallow her laughter. Unfair because again, nobody outside will hear them, and she hasn't said anything about Karin's poor posture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm loving Grandmother Brigitte more and more. :D
> 
> This started out as a character study and to explore Karin's potential past, the relationship with her grandmother who is only mentioned in the game, and her motivations. 
> 
> Now it's evolving as the base to reimagine Karin who will make slightly different decisions once she meets Yuri and the others. One change will be that she won't be defined by a crush.


End file.
